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5As Framework for Increasing Impact of TrainingSean Murray interviews Steve Gill about the 5As Framework for achieving business impact from training. This is a 45 minute Webinar with several audience polls and responses to chat room questions from audience.

January 20, 2015

In a two-part article I wrote for BusinessThinker.com titled, Learning Culture: A Workplace Environment for Success, I start by posing some questions that I think people need to ask themselves about their organizations to determine if they need a stronger learning culture:

Do you want employees to care about their work and their customers and go the extra mile?

Do you want employees to improve their ability to contribute to the organization?

Do you want employees to be creative and innovative and think about new and better products and services?

Do you want employees to be focused on achieving results?

Do you want employees who openly discuss ways to improve performance?

Then I describe what must change if your answer is “yes” to any of these questions:

...you need to develop an organizational culture that supports continuous learning by everyone from the CEO to the hourly employee. HR and training professionals, by themselves, cannot develop this kind of culture. If you’re like most businesses, you rely heavily on these professionals to deliver programs that provide employees with what they need to know to do their jobs, whether that is assembling products, running complex machines, managing teams, or running an entire organization. That model of learning was effective for most of the past century. However, that model does not work for the modern company. Today’s companies require a culture in which everyone is continuously learning as individuals, as teams, and as whole organizations.

I go on to explain why this change is so important at this time. In Part Two, I talk more specifically about what organizations can do to create a learning culture.

January 08, 2015

It’s that time of year again, when we pay special attention to our personal and career goals. However, how likely is it that we will actually achieve those goals? I belong to a fitness center at the local community college and I’m always fascinated by the January upsurge in activity and then the fall off around March and April each year. Hopefully, that means some people have achieved their fitness and weight loss goals, but I’m afraid that for many it means they have given up. These folks probably haven’t established the processes and relationships that will help them achieve their goals.

Jesse Lyn Stoner makes some excellent suggestions for what we can do in terms of processes and relationships to ensure that we achieve our New Year’s resolutions. You can apply these same principles to organizational learning goals. For individuals, teams, and whole organizations to achieve their learning goals, they need to develop supportive processes and relationships. It’s not enough to identify the knowledge and skills that you want to develop. And it’s not enough to select a method for learning. To apply and sustain that learning, you must also establish processes and relationships that support learning and application of that learning.

Listed below are Stoner’s six suggestions and my explanation of how each one helps in the attainment of learning goals.

1. Start with your current goals.

What new knowledge and skills are you trying to acquire? How has that been going and what can you learn about your own process of learning? Decide if you want to continue to acquire that knowledge and those skills or are you ready to move on to something else. For example, maybe you want to learn how to give negative feedback to your direct reports. Take stock of your ability to do that and whether you need to continue working on that skill and then identify additional learning goals that you need to achieve.

2. Connect your goals to a larger purpose.

Align your goals with the strategic goals of the organization. Be clear with yourself, with co-workers, and with your manager about how acquiring certain knowledge and skills will contribute to the organization’s success. Have a “line of sight” from the learning goal to the performance of the organization. For example, be clear about how learning Lean/Six Sigma will help the organization be successful.

3. Goal setting is not always a logical process.

Don’t get frustrated by the lack of a straight-line process. You might set some goals and then, in talking with your boss and after some experience, decide that those goals need to be modified. And given the pace of change, a learning goal that you set today could be irrelevant tomorrow. However, whatever the goal, have some notion of how you and your boss will know that it has been achieved.

4. Write your goals down and put them somewhere visible.

Writing them down will help you commit to achieving your goals. Keeping them visible will remind you that this is your task and also allow you to modify the goals as needed. The adage, “out of sight; out of mind”, applies here.

5. Don’t keep your goals a secret.

Discuss your goals with your boss and co-workers. You need their support. For example, if you are learning how to run a more effective and efficient team meeting, you need the cooperation of your team members and their feedback. Your boss should be able to provide you with opportunities to practice these team management skills and advise you on what you need to learn and how best to learn it.

6. Set up processes and practices that support your goals.

You’re more likely to successfully achieve your learning goals if you hold yourself accountable and if others hold you accountable. Discuss the indicators of successful learning with your boss and co-workers. Arrange times to regularly check in with them to take stock of your progress.

Organizational learning is not something you can do in isolation. You can identify learning goals but you will need the support and involvement of bosses and co-workers to achieve those goals. As Stoner recommends, establish those processes and relationships at the outset and you will be more likely to follow-through and be successful.

January 02, 2015

Throughout 2014, I used this blog to illuminate important leadership and management issues. The topics ranged from the problems with performance reviews to managing temporary workers to innovation to developing a learning culture in organizations.

As a way of review, I’ve selected five blog posts from the past year that seem to have had the most interest for readers. Here are the links with a short excerpt from each post:

Eight leader habits are essential to a learning culture. These are behaviors ingrained in the routines and rituals of organizations that are continually learning and learning how to learn...These are good habits that you’ll want to promote and nurture in your organization.

Instead of trying to anticipate the training that will be needed in companies, we need workers who can continually learn and organizations that support continual learning and change. We need workers who can utilize learning opportunities that are presented to them, whether formal or informal, self-directed or social, desktop or mobile, and we need organizational cultures that value and reward learning. And we need leaders and managers who help workers learn where and when it is needed and hold those workers accountable for learning and for making a difference in their organizations.

All organizations have a culture. Some cultures support learning more than others. Some cultures stifle learning by marginalizing the training and development function, by discouraging risk-taking, by not rewarding learning, by not allowing opportunities for informal and social learning, and by undermining performance improvement efforts.

Your organization needs [a learning] culture in order to thrive and survive in the world today. There was a time when a static set of skills would last a career, when one kind of management (usually command-and-control) would be sufficient over the life of a company. Not anymore. Today, information is coming at us so fast, technology is changing so rapidly, the world is changing so dramatically, that the old methods of learning and performance improvement do not work any longer…if they ever did.

A major characteristic of a learning culture is that individuals, teams, and whole organizations are constantly learning how to learn. They are learning how to acquire the knowledge and skills that they need to help the organization be successful. The teacher-centered, classroom-focused, right-and-wrong answer, static instructional environment that was the primary modality in the schools they attended does not fit the rapidly changing, technology mediated, on-demand knowledge and skills that are needed in today’s organizations. In this environment, people need to be continually figuring out different ways to learn, whether that be individually using new technology, in teams that are trying to become more effective, or as the whole organization learns how to communicate, how to use resources more efficiently, and how to make better decisions.

December 29, 2014

A major characteristic of a learning culture is that individuals, teams, and whole organizations are constantly learning how to learn. They are learning how to acquire the knowledge and skills that they need to help the organization be successful. The teacher-centered, classroom-focused, right-and-wrong answer, static instructional environment that was the primary modality in the schools they attended does not fit the rapidly changing, technology mediated, on-demand knowledge and skills that are needed in today’s organizations. In this environment, people need to be continually figuring out different ways to learn, whether that be individually using new technology, in teams that are trying to become more effective, or as the whole organization learns how to communicate, how to use resources more efficiently, and how to make better decisions.

… Imagine an environment that is constantly changing. Imagine an environment where the participants are building, creating, and participating in a massive network of dozens of databases, hundreds of wikis and websites, and thousands of message forums, literally creating a large-scale knowledge economy. Imagine an environment where participants are constantly measuring and evaluating their own performances, even if that requires them to build new tools to do it. Imagine an environment where user interface dashboards are individually and personally constructed by users to help them make sense of the world and their own performance in it. Imagine an environment where evaluation is based on after-action reviews not to determine rewards but to continually enhance performance. Imagine an environment where learning happens on a continuous basis because the participants are internally motivated to find, share, and filter new information on a near-constant basis.

The environment that Thomas and Seely Brown are describing is one in which people have learned how to learn collectively. This collective learning is already happening in a number of different types of organizations. However, this is not how most of us learned how to learn in school. There we were evaluated on the basis of our individual retention of knowledge. We learned how to acquire information and analyze and synthesize that information on our own. Learning collectively is something that individuals, teams, and organizations today need to learn how to do. This is the work of twenty-first century organizations.

December 19, 2014

In a blog post titled, "Building a Productive Learning Culture", Thomas Handcock and Jean Martin say that businesses, because of need and demand, are increasing employee participation in training but failing to increase productivity. Even with all of these additional opportunities for learning, most workers are not acquiring the knowledge and skills they need to be successful. The authors believe that a culture change is required. They say that businesses should shift from a culture based on participation in learning activities to a culture based on results from learning activities. They write: To make this shift from a culture of learning participation to a productive learning culture, L&D functions must manage three key components.

Learning opportunity: provide access to high-quality, curated learning opportunities, not a large number of choices

Learning capability: make sure employees know how to learn, not just what to learn

Learning environment: ensure that employees focus not only on their own development but also on building a supportive learning environment throughout the organization.

I agree with the need for these components but I think change to a productive learning culture requires much more. As I have written previously, transformation to a learning culture needs:

Executives who set an example for risk-taking and learning from failure

Managers who help employees set learning goals, apply learning, and hold themselves and others accountable for results

Project leaders who use action learning to help their teams learn and improve team performance

An environment and systems that facilitate sharing information and social learning

This is the kind of culture in which employees will be constantly learning, continuously improving performance, and consistently achieving positive outcomes for the business.

December 08, 2014

A learning culture is a community of workers continuously and collectively seeking performance improvement through new knowledge, new skills, and new applications of knowledge and skills to achieve the goals of the organization. A learning culture is a culture of inquiry; an environment in which employees feel safe challenging the status quo and taking risks to enhance the quality of what they do for customers, themselves, and other stakeholders. A learning culture is an environment in which learning how to learn is valued and accepted. In a learning culture, the pursuit of learning is woven into the fabric of organizational life.

Your organization needs this kind of culture in order to thrive and survive in the world today. There was a time when a static set of skills would last a career, when one kind of management (usually command-and-control) would be sufficient over the life of a company. Not anymore. Today, information is coming at us so fast, technology is changing so rapidly, the world is changing so dramatically, that the old methods of learning and performance improvement do not work any longer…if they ever did.

For example, in the past five years, Uber, the poster child for a “shared economy”, has grown from a smartphone app for requesting a taxi ride to a private-ride company valued at $40 billion that is disrupting the taxi business in cities around the world and changing people’s patterns of transportation. In its short history, Uber employees have had to learn how to use new technology and how to work with their customers. The organization has had to learn how to grow quickly while adapting to local laws, regulations, and customs. The CEO and other company leaders have had to learn to manage the media scrutiny that comes with being big, powerful, and having access to the personal data of millions of people.

Uber is just one of many examples. Healthcare, manufacturing, media, hospitality, banking and finance, shipping, construction, communications, education…practically every sector of our society is changing before our eyes at unprecedented speed. Seven major aspects of this change are compelling us to make learning an essential value of our corporate cultures:

Pace of Change. Change is happening faster and faster primarily due to technology and a mindset among young entrepreneurs who do not feel bound by the way prior generations did things. Knowledge and skills are not as static as they once were. You should assume that the knowledge and skills that got you your job will not be what you need to keep your job.

Competition is Cheap. Competition can come from anywhere in the world with little investment on the part of the competitor. To stay competitive, people have to be more knowledgeable, more skilled, and better able to apply new knowledge and skills effectively. Our organizations need to learn how to respond to new ways of working, new ways of leading, and new ways of managing.

Demands of Workers. For many organizations, an autocratic, command-and-control style of managing will not (and probably never did) get the most from employees. Workers want to participate in the governance of their organizations. They want to contribute in a meaningful way. They want to develop competencies to be effective in their current organizations and to be attractive in a shifting marketplace. They want to learn!

Ineffectiveness of Event-Based Training. Classroom, workshop, and seminar experiences do not have the desired impact on organizational performance. Most estimates put the rate of formal training transfer to the workplace at less than 20% of participants. This represents a tremendous waste of resources: cost of developing and delivering training that isn’t used and number of employees that don’t apply what they’ve learned. Instead of pushing information at employees, employees should be able to pull the information they need when and where they need it.

Need for Innovation. At the core of any organization’s competitiveness today is innovation. That is, developing and applying a new idea, product, or process. It can be for customers, stakeholders, or for better organizational functioning. Innovation cannot happen without learning – workers need to learn how to learn from previous experience and experiments, innovators need to learn how to develop new products and services, and users of the innovation need to learn how to apply the new technology or process to solve problems.

Pressure for Results. CEOs are under pressure from investors and from activist Boards. They hear the footsteps of competitors who can disrupt markets easily and cheaply due to the global economy and advances in communication technology. Company leaders feel the need to respond by shortening the product development cycle, being responsive to shifting demands of the marketplace, and producing products and services that are better and lower cost than anyone else. The organization needs to learn how to compete in this environment, to use market research effectively and efficiently, and to be responsive to customer demands.

Success Depends on Shared Information. Useful knowledge resides with many people. No one person has all the information needed to be successful. So much information is coming at us in so many different ways that we need each other to make sense of it all. HR and training departments cannot possibly keep up. And employees can’t afford to wait for a learning event; they have to develop and apply new skills immediately to a job that is constantly changing. It has always been that most of what people learn occurs on-the-job and from co-workers. Now we have to be more intentional about this learning and ensure that it is the right information at the right time and delivered in the right way.

For all of these reasons, companies need a culture that supports continuous learning and performance improvement. It’s not a matter of whether or not you should develop a learning culture; it’s a matter of how.

Creating a learning culture takes conscious effort on the part of leaders. It will take time and patience and perseverance. You will run into resistance because a learning culture represents a dramatic change in the values and behaviors of many organizations. As with any transformational change, people will find reasons why this can’t and shouldn’t be done. However, the success of your organization is at stake so you need to communicate the message, build support, and begin the process.

November 28, 2014

In "Part One" of this post, I presented some situations in which espoused values (not necessarily values in use) play a role and examples of instinctive reactions that indicate either the presence or absence of a learning culture.

Here are four more situations:

The espoused value says, “We value creativity and innovation.”

An employee had an idea for a new mobile app that seemed very promising and early feedback from customers was that it was something they would want. However, after a couple of months, the employee discovered that the app couldn’t have the intended functionality without being overly

complicated and too expensive for customers. Is the first reaction of the employee’s boss to say, “What a waste; two months lost. Next time we have to make sure the product will be successful before we start on it. Now, how am I going to explain this to management?” Or, is the first reaction of the employee’s boss to say, “Good effort. What did you learn from trying to build the app? What did you learn about developing new products, about collaboration, and about yourself? Is there anything we could have done to help you achieve your goal?” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

The espoused value says, “We want feedback and accountability.”

The leadership team of the company spent three days in an annual meeting developing a strategic plan for the following year. At the end of the first quarter, a manager asked the VP for Planning why they hadn’t used the plan to measure their progress and take stock of what they need to do to achieve their goals. Is the VP’s first reaction to say, “It’s been a busy quarter and, besides, the main reason we have that meeting each year is to get the leadership team together. The plan is out of date as soon as it is done.” Or, is the VP’s first reaction to say, “That’s a good point. I’m going to recommend that we get the leadership team back together and talk about what we can learn about ourselves and the company from a comparison of what we said we would do to what’s been accomplished.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

The espoused value says, “We develop leaders.”

A department manager goes to her Director with a complaint that she is not getting best effort from her team. She says that they don’t follow through on assignments, they are late for meetings, and they don’t communicate important decisions to each other. Is the Director’s first reaction to say, “You’re a leader now. You need to take charge and be a leader in your team. They should be looking to you for direction.” Or, is the director’s first reaction to say, “It seems like you could benefit from a coach who could help you learn how to be a more effective leader in this team. Let’s talk about how a coach could be helpful and what kind of coach we should find for you.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

The espoused value is “continuous improvement.”

A new salesperson is attending a class in relationship selling at a local college. He goes to his sales manager and asks how he could apply what he is learning to their department’s sales strategy. Is the Sales Manager’s first reaction to say, “I doubt we can use what you’re learning in this sales organization. The way we’ve always done sales here is by the numbers. You make a certain number of cold calls. A percentage of those turn into presentations and a percentage of those presentations turn into sales. We don’t have time for anything else.” Or, is the Sales Manager’s first reaction to say, “Tell me about what you are learning in the class. How do you think it could help our sales organization? Let’s come up with a plan for how you could experiment with that approach and then we can determine if it’s a good fit with our goals.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

How would people in your organization instintively react to these situations? What other situations would help you determine if you have a learning culture in your organization?

November 27, 2014

The answer to this question is important because of the impact culture has on an organization. I like this quote attributed to Peter Drucker, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. You can have the most elegant strategic plan, but if your organization’s beliefs and assumptions, values and guiding principles, workplace symbols and artifacts, and company lore are not consistent with that plan, not much will happen.

Culture used to be considered a byproduct of organizational life. Today, many companies are being quite intentional about culture. So, how do you know what kind of culture you have and, if you want

to create a learning culture, how do you know when you have one? Dharmesh Shah, Founder and CTO at HubSpot, gives us a way to think about this. He writes, “The true nature of your company – and its culture – is determined by how you instinctively react.”

Taking a cue from Shah, here are some espoused values (not necessarily values in use) and instinctive reactions that indicate either the presence or absence of a learning culture.

The espoused value says, “We want all employees to develop their skills and abilities.”

An executive assistant asks her boss for permission to attend a series of workshops on financial management that is being offered by the company. She explains that this would help her understand the company better, be more helpful to him, and strengthen her career portfolio. Is the executive’s first reaction to say, “I appreciate your ambition, but I need you here right now. We can look at arranging something in the future. And, besides, I don't have the budget for that.” Or, is the executive’s first reaction to say, “I appreciate your ambition. That would be useful knowledge for you to have. Thanks for bringing this request to my attention. Let’s talk about how we can make that happen as soon as possible.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

The espoused value says, “We learn from our mistakes.”

A project team member reluctantly admits to the team leader that due to some unforeseen factors their project will not come in on-time and within budget. Is the team leader’s first reaction to say, “I’m very disappointed in our team. Why weren’t these problems anticipated? Why wasn’t I told about this sooner?” Or, is the team leader’s first reaction to say, “Let’s get the team together and review what happened. I want us to learn from this experience so that we can do a better job of reaching our goals in the future.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

The espoused value says, “We share information and have open and honest lines of communication.”

The R&D department of a company has produced several prototypes of an exciting new product that has the potential to become a blockbuster for the company. Manufacturing helped with the prototype but has not learned enough about it yet to move it into production. The Marketing Department is telling potential customers about the new product and the Sales Department is taking orders and promising delivery. Is the CEO’s first reaction to say, “We have to fast-track this product with Manufacturing so that we can fill orders and keep customers happy.” Or, is the CEO’s first reaction to say, “Let’s get all of the departments heads together and find out what each of them needs to know from each other in order to make a successful launch of the new product.” Both reactions are reasonable, but one is indicative of a learning culture and the other is not.

How would people in your organization instintively react to these situations? What other situations would help you determine if you have a learning culture in your organization?

November 13, 2014

What and how people learn is changing dramatically. Digital technology has opened the door to new learning formats and created a demand for new, more fluid types of training and development efforts. Globalization, automation, and networking are making continuous acquisition of new knowledge and the upgrading of skills part of life and work.

In “The Lifetime Learner”, a publication of Deloitte University Press, the authors argue that the demand for new forms of education and training are quite different from what is being delivered by traditional post-secondary institutions and corporate training departments. They write:

Individuals are…challenged by an accelerating cycle of skill obsolescence in a period of unprecedented transition from skill set to skill set. The rapidly changing business landscape demands constant learning of new skills and domains, retraining, and applying existing capabilities in new contexts. It also demands a greater fluency in digital tools and comfort in virtual environments. It rewards those with greater capacity to seek and access resources and to build social capital through personal networks and participation in communities.

In this “rapidly changing business landscape”, we need individuals and organizations that know how to learn. Those institutions that can learn quickly and constantly will be competitive and will survive. It’s no longer about having the most creative training events; it’s about developing a culture that values and supports continuous learning. This must be evident in the actions of leaders, in the manager-learner relationship, in the allocation of resources, in the recognition and reward system, in the way people communicate with each other, and in how people are held accountable.

We need agility in learners and in learning interventions in organizations. Employees need to take responsibility for their own learning. They need to learn fast and learn just-in-time, whether how to fix a machine or how to fix an organization. And organizations need to create opportunities for individuals, teams, and the enterprise to learn how to learn fast and effectively.

November 05, 2014

Tom Friedman has a way of capturing the essence of complex economic, social, and environmental dynamics and putting that complexity in words that the rest of us can understand. He coined the phrase “the world is flat” to describe the globalization of everything. Now he has announced “the world is fast” to describe the three major challenges that we face. He writes, “The three biggest forces on the planet — the market, Mother Nature and Moore’s Law — are all surging, really fast, at the same time.”

These changes are having an enormous impact on what and how people need to learn. In a book by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson titled, “The Second Machine Age,” the authors describe the situation this way:

…as computers get more powerful, companies have less need for some kinds of workers. Technological progress is going to leave behind some people, perhaps even a lot of people, as it races ahead. As we’ll demonstrate, there’s never been a better time to be a worker with special skills or the right education, because these people can use technology to create and capture value. However, there’s never been a worse time to be a worker with only “ordinary” skills and abilities to offer, because computers, robots, and other digital technologies are acquiring these skills and abilities at an extraordinary rate.

Using this logic, we are not able to predict what skills and abilities workers will need even just a few months from now. It seems like every day there is a disruptive innovation that is dramatically changing the way work is done and what people need to know. Guests can now check themselves into their hotel rooms with their smart phones. Doctors can make “house calls” via the Web. First-run movies can be streamed at home. Clothes shopping can be done entirely online. Banking can be done entirerly online. In each case, old jobs are being replaced by new jobs and those new jobs require much more knowledge and skill.

Instead of trying to anticipate the training that will be needed in companies, we need workers who can continually learn and organizations that support continual learning and change. We need workers who can utilize learning opportunities that are presented to them, whether formal or informal, self-directed or social, desktop or mobile, and we need organizational cultures that value and reward learning. And we need leaders and managers who help workers learn where and when it is needed and hold those workers accountable for learning and for making a difference in their organizations.